The Missing Meter

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Working paper · v1.0

The Missing Meter

What every infrastructure buildout leaves behind, and the unit AI still lacks

October 1, 2026

AI is the first trillion-dollar infrastructure buildout that cannot yet state, in a standard unit, what its output costs. This paper proposes the served token as a unit of account for AI inference, conditioned on a stated service-level objective and quality floor.

Sidney Scott · The Ashby Institute

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Citation: Sidney Scott. “The Missing Meter: What every infrastructure buildout leaves behind, and the unit AI still lacks.” v1.0, October 1, 2026. https://themissingmeter.org/publications/the-missing-meter/

Data and reproducibility

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